Belted ammunition for a machine gun is typically stored in a rectangular metal magazine box, with the ammunition belt being disposed within the magazine box in a vertically serpentined configuration with an outer end of the serpentined ammunition belt extending outwardly through an outlet opening of the magazine box and being connected to a feed mechanism portion of the gun. During firing of the gun, its feed mechanism pulls the belt outwardly through the outlet opening and fires, in rapid succession, the individual belted ammunition rounds delivered to the gun.
As is known in the armament art, the storage in and subsequent outfeed of belted ammunition from a magazine box of this general type may be subject to two types of potential problems—(1) the intermeshing of the projectile ends of the ammunition rounds in vertically successive lengths of the serpentined belted ammunition within the magazine box, which can cause a feed jam, and (2) the creation of a required ammunition outfeed pull force that exceeds the available pull force of the machine gun, which can prevent the gun from being fired.
From the foregoing it can be seen that a need exists for a machine gun belted ammunition magazine box that eliminates or at least substantially reduces these problems often associated with conventional machine gun magazine box designs. It is to this need that the present invention is primarily directed.